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Ain’t it hard when you discover that
He really wasn’t where it’s at
After he took from you everything he could steal.
–Bob Dylan, "Like a Rolling Stone"
President Obama, whose bully pulpit has been as silent as a tomb over these many long months in the health care struggle, has finally spoken:
"As the Senate prepares for a final round of votes on its healthcare reform bill, President Barack Obama chastised the insurance industry for its lobbying against the legislation.
In his weekly address Saturday, Obama extolled the virtues of the bill for the various protections it would provide for Americans in their health insurance coverage. He also called for an up and down vote on the legislation. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has struggled to find the necessary 60 votes to beat back a filibuster, which Obama blamed on the insurance companies’ heavy lobbying.
“They’re spending millions of dollars to kill health insurance reform, just like they’ve done so many times before. They want to preserve a system that works better for the insurance industry than it does for the American people,” Obama said in his address.
Yes, indeed, they did. And they have been overwhelmingly sucessful. Obama has gotten the bill he always wanted, thanks to his close partners and contributors in the industry. Their soaring stocks and declarations of victory speak for themselves.
Obama’s statement, at this final hour and after the struggle is largely over, seems to me to be a high-water mark in his squandered leadership, and a new (and painfully transparent) low in cynical kabuki.
16 Comments
This is an excellent post, especially the use of Dylan’s lyrics. But there’s a typo. You should have referred to the President’s “weakly” address. Never before have I seen so much glorious gas signifying nothing but sellouts.
Which Dems can we call or email to demand a NO vote on the Senate’s proposed bill?
The name of the song is ” Like A Rolling Stone ” Just Look who accepted the largest bribes from the health care lobby…Obama!!! Thats why we don’t and won’t have resonably priced easily accessable health care. All the rangling and arguing is just theatre to entertain the rubes. Conservatives are trators to America, both republican and democrat!
How stupid of me. Thanks, fixed it. To nottolate, I think its a done deal in the senate.
Well, Barry’s right about one thing. The insurance lobby spent a lot of money. It went straight to him and his old pals in the senate. It’s a special gift to be able to lie the way Barry does. I’d still be a mortgage broker if I could lie without a care the way he can.
Has anyone else noticed that the worse his policies get, the less able Obama is to pull off that famous “intellectual” schtick in his speeches? More and more, he speaks in the rank and tired types of slogans that Republicans do, and he comes off as less and less smart in the process.
I think that must be true for his audience on the left, but not sure how he is now playing with the voting audience as a whole.
Perhaps related was a feature on Olberman last night that the DNC was going to adopt a strategy of running against Bush in next year’s midterms. How bankrupt is it that you feel your best move is to run against someone who’s been out of power for two years? Is that the best you’ve got?
Well, unfortunately it is the best they’ve got. What else are they going to run on? Of course, such a strategy would work better if they could point to any meaningful differences with Bush, and if Republicans hadn’t already tried it first.
Yes, that’s the best they’ve got. And even that’s not going to ring true since even the biggest idiot can see this is just Bush lite. You don’t hear many people talking about Obama being great any more, just excuses for why he has to keep us in wars, pay off bankers, keep up the deregulation, etc. Those who thought Bush was great hate Obama personally, so they’re not going to help him. Those who hated Bush haven’t seen any change they can believe in so they’re not going to help him. But, hey, let’s just attack Howard Dean as the person who is taking the party to hell in a handbasket. That’ll work!
Rebubs and dems… like the same leopard with spots in just slightly different places. We’re food……..ahhhhhh..run, to a third party
Having lived as a young adult through the 1960s, I was convinced in the run-up to the 2008 presidential election that if Obama really stood for change, he’d never make it to the swearing-in ceremony. I held my breath: was he for real or a conman?
Fuck.
The entire 60 vote thing is bullshit kabuki. No majority party that wanted to win anything would put up with it for a second.
BS kabuki framing fits well enough. They knew last spring of 2009 where the battle field was,what it was and certainly after what befell the Clinton WH attempt at healthcare reform knew the enemy well.
Despite all convenient misdirection and efforts at blaming the R Party,the for profit health insurers and other healthcare regime players and gamers this was about campaign coffers replenishment and keeping Big American For Profit Healthcare Regime happy with D Party and kicking in the campaign contributions.
If Barack Obama truly wanted to reform. If this Obama WH truly wanted to reform. If the D Party in Congress truly wanted to reform this would have worked out quite differently. They did not want to reform. Now that the BS kabuki is nearly done who is happy and who is not? Where is the real money flowing? AHIP and Big Pharma and Big American Healthcare players know.
Barack Obama in less than one year has done a crash and burn with his credibility and integrity. This so called reform is where Obama WH wanted it to come out at. The kabuki has been full of BS to be sure.
Now on to 2010 elections and telling us how they did great and did it all for us and we should support them for having done it. Charlatans and first rate hucksters they are in doing so.
Contempt now felt burns red hot. The effort to reform was BS kabuki and now D Party,Obama WH and Barack Obama are going to tell us how they deserve to be supported and re-elected. The R Party will be blamed. AHIP and Big Pharma will be blamed. Boss Tweed would understand it well.
By rights some people should be indicted on bribery,graft and corruption charges for using taxpayer money to buy,sell and secure political party dominance. The R Party is no paragon of goodness or greatness to be sure but the D Party is little different then as well. A pox on both parties.
Yep, I’ve noticed that lately Obama and Axelrod have been playing up on this contention that the health insurance industry is determined to kill THIS Senate bill.
Axelrod said the exact same thing on Scarborough’s morning show and Ed Schultz, also a guest, blasted him that they Industry is playing a shell game. They’re trying to make it look like they don’t like it. Why are their stocks going through the roof if this Bill will adversely affect their profits?
The Administration knows the public is on to them — that this is a gift to the insurance industry — and so Obama and Axelrod quotes like the one in your post above just make me seethe in fury.
I couldn’t even watch his weekly address. I can’t stand the site of him anymore — had to cut if off. Let’s hope a strong Democratic populist will make a run in the primaries or perhaps from a third party. I’d be delighted to throw my vote away just to cast it against these corporate shills.
These criminals in the White House win whether the Democrats are in the majority or not. Conservatives and Business Liberals are in charge. Obama was selected as a transitional figure. The next phase for these sociopaths is full blown shock therapy in that they are after Social Security next. They tried frontal assaults on Medicare and Social Security, but that didn’t work. So they have used this more stealthy approach. They got rid of aid to the poor under Clinton. They chipped away at Medicare adding co-pays and donut holes and now they will further weaken it. Next they will start to further weaken social security.
They are careless people. They could care less about foreclosures or unemployment and the misery of people bringing wedding rings to the pawn shop. I concluded this early on probably because I read Paul Street Obama as Predicted
and blackagendareport. Glen Ford of blackagenda report talked about Obama
on our radio show. Listen to Glen talk about the way Obama uses the language of Dr. King to hoodwink. He talks about how the corporatists have taken the word “reform” and used it for evil from welfare “reform” to health care “reform”. It is 1984. Next Bernanke wants to “reform” “entitlements”. Obama also wants to do the same. They make “entitlements” a bad thing even though we are actually “entitled” to them because we paid into the funds each and every working week of our lives. They started early pitting one generation against another back in the campaign and continue to do so.
Unless there is a genuine third and fourth party with lefties and Paulites splitting off from the business parties, this country will turn hard right and Obama will have served his function. He can serve 4 years and go off and give speeches. He’s fine with that. He never stayed at any job very long anyway.
Nodding in agreement with everyone’s excellent comments.